Towards Next Generation Teaching, Learning, and Context-Aware Applications for Higher Education: A Review on Blockchain, IoT, Fog and Edge Computing Enabled Smart Campuses and Universities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper provides a good survey of the latest key technologies and status on smart campuses and universities, including essential characteristics, common architectures, block chain and IoT technology and applications, and the challenges. One question I still have is that the differences between smart campus and smart cities. Based on the paper, it seems that excepts some specific education and research applications, the architectures and technologies used can be same for smart cities and smart campus. I wish the paper can provide better comparisons between these two. I also wonder if this is the first paper of this kind. Are there any other survey paper in smart campuses, or in smart cities? If yes, how do they differ from this survey.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam,
The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which
have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed
responses to the comments. In order to ease the labour of the reviewers we have
colored in red the major differences with the previous version of the article.
Regards.
The authors.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is well organized and well written. The paper is only descriptive not introducing novelty. The references are up to date and relevant. The paper is however interesting as it presents some practical implementations/applications.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam,
The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which
have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed
responses to the comments. In order to ease the labour of the reviewers we have
colored in red the major differences with the previous version of the article.
Regards.
The authors.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors describe the state of the start on the application of the
latest key technologies for the development of smart campuses and Universities. In particular they show how University campuses could benefit from IoT technologies, especially when technologies like blockchain are added, in order to improve accountability, transparency, cyber-security and redundancy to the processes and data managed. The survey is intended for university planners, IoT vendors and developers involved into smart campuses and universities planning.
After an overview on smart campus and smart university, the architectures proposed by various authors are described, pointing out that they can be classified as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) architectures based on IoT and cloud computing with the help pf Big Data processing. It seems that all the main architectures are considered.
Other interesting paradigmas are described focusing on the concept of Floating Content node and improved security aspects, which completes the discussion. The blockchaing technology is discussed and appropriately considered as not always suitable for the needs of a university campus.
A complete set of smart campus and university applications are described, and the communication technologies are taken in to account also. The future of today's communications technologies for smart campus applications are listed and discussed. Fog/edge computing is considered as well.
I think the paper is well written and does not need modification in order to be published.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam,
The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which
have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed
responses to the comments. In order to ease the labour of the reviewers we have
colored in red the major differences with the previous version of the article.
Regards.
The authors.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
